By Manifesto Joe
My only sibling, a sister, was killed in an auto accident in 1981, only three weeks after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president. Today, while watching the inauguration of Barack Obama, I thought of her, and what she would think about America today if she's been watching this on some fourth-dimension TV set.
"An African-American president, in 2009? I thought it would take a century," I can almost hear her say. Then, during the parade, "They're a great-looking couple. Listen to the screams -- it's like Elvis came back from the dead. ..."
"Joe Biden? I remember that young smart-mouth from back in the Seventies. He was still in the Senate last year, and now he's vice president? Unbelievable."
I felt sad that my big sister, who would have been pushing 55 now, didn't live to see this day.
I also felt great pride in America, more pride than I've felt in a very long time.
After 28 mostly depressing years, it really is, at last, "morning in America." I hope you can see us now, Sis.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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2 comments:
Sorry you lost your sister back then, Manifesto Joe. Sounds like she, too, was an aware and intelligent person with a sense of history like yourself. I'm sure she is peeking in today from the great divide and is loving every minute of it. May she rest always in contented peace and true, continued happiness.
Very sorry about your sister, Joe. I've been there, lost a person who was a very active part of my life many years ago, also in a highway accident. It gets better, but it never really goes away.
I know the feeling that a departed loved one is near. Never used to believe in such things...as far as I was concerned, dead was dead. But some years ago I had a rather shocking experience that, even as a devout cynic, I've never been able to explain or discount. I saw some people in my house who, the best I can say, were not a part of what I ordinarily recognize as "reality." It scared the daylights out of me (coward that I am), but it changed something very basic. Some people say that a belief in an after-life is simply wishful thinking, an inability to accept our own mortality. I think they're wrong. Whatever is there that we cannot see, I've come to believe that death is not the end of it all. What is there could be almost anything, but I believe there is something there, perhaps people we have loved, and who have loved us back, and still do. Like you, I often speculate what they would say about the world we live in now.
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